Ch. 19: The Thin-Content Cull That Lifted the Whole Site

Ch. 19: The Thin-Content Cull That Lifted the Whole Site

After the helpful-content rollout, my outdoor site flatlined. 90 articles, but 30 were dead weight dragging the rest down. I ran a cull.

— Exported all URLs with last-16-month clicks from GSC
— Flagged any page with under 5 clicks AND zero backlinks — found 31 of them
— For each: improve, merge, or delete. I improved 8, merged 11 into stronger posts with 301s, deleted 12
— Deleted ones I 301'd to the closest relevant page, not the homepage
— Resubmitted the sitemap and waited

Six weeks later, my SURVIVING pages — untouched — rose. Site-wide sessions went 9k to 13k/mo.

Lesson banked: every weak page taxes your strong ones. Sometimes the fastest way up is to delete, not write.